My vision as an educator is to make a significant difference in the future successes of all of my students, especially those who are faced with tremendous adversities and disadvantages. I have a desire to educate the young minds that enter into my classroom and help them blossom in to well-rounded, responsible and successful individuals. I have learned the art of resilience through my various experiences which I use to demonstrate to students about how to overcome life's challenges and become stronger in the process. My students will all agree, heartache and disappointments may happen in life, but there are no quitters in Mrs. Stevenson's class.

Classroom Environment

Creating and fostering an organized classroom that is characterized by respect from both students and teacher is important for the learning environment. I have a firm, yet fair approach to discipline and class conduct and expect students to try their hardest even when learning gets difficult. Some students have had unpleasant experiences that have created fear of failure. I want all students to feel secure enough to take risks in their learning and not worry about making mistakes. This is why I like to use a variety of interactive approaches and student interests to provide instruction. By taking a holistic approach to instruction, I am able to meet the social, emotional and academic needs of my students. Students should feel safe asking questions and contributing to discussions and take risks without having a fear of failure.

Students are expected to take ownership of their classroom environment by their actions and contributions. I rotate classroom jobs weekly so that students can actively participate in keeping our classroom in order. Students are also included in some decision making opportunities and will have a chance to voice their thoughts during our classroom meetings. They will be held to a high standard of conduct when interacting with each other in the classroom. Intentional disrespect and bullying will not be tolerated and will have severe consequences. For more information on classroom environment please check out our class syllabus.

Instruction

While students of the same age may share some common characteristics, when it comes to how they learn, each is different in their own way (Puckett, 2013). Because I have such different learners in my classroom, I know that one style of providing instruction will not meet every student's needs. For this reason I differentiate my instruction so that all students have an opportunity to learn.

Differentiated instruction (DI), allows teachers to consider students' strengths and weaknesses and strategically implement instruction based on these characteristics. This is so students can take in information in different ways, use different approaches to understanding key aspects of the information, and express or demonstrate what they have learned according to their skills and abilities (Puckett, 2013 p1.3).

Because of the varied academic and social levels of students that I have in my classroom, it is important for me to provide instruction that will benefit all of my students. I accomplish this by doing a lot of cooperative learning activities where students will have to work in small groups to complete a task. I also use technology as a resource to connect learning for students. I believe it is important to incorporate student interests into my instruction so they can connect to the subject. I am a firm believer of Howard Gardner’s theory of “multiple intelligences,” which describe nine distinct intelligences types. All students tend to process information differently and may be more linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, visual, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intra-personal, naturalist or existential learners (Gardner, 2011). By using various instructional strategies to present a subject, I am able to reach all students in multiple ways. I actively engage their eager minds by incorporating a variety of manipulatives, cooperative learning projects and brain based learning activities. I try to incorporate learning activities that appeal to all of the above-mentioned types of learners. By doing so, the majority of my students retain more information from my lessons. By devising creative and stimulating lessons, I can help to maintain a positive learning environment which accommodate multiple intelligences, while providing a hands-on-approach to learning that increases student opportunities to succeed by keeping them engaged and focused.

Assessment Both formative and summative assessments are necessary to be able to measure quality of teaching and what students need to learn. Formative assessments, are used more to guide and monitor the learning process whereas summative assessments are taken to gauge student learning in relation to the content standards and to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction (Newman, 2013, p 11.3). Formative assessments are extremely beneficial to provide effective instruction. Both assessments however, are important to implement data-driven instruction, which can also help me to differentiate and provide customized learning for individual students.Typically, I use a student's summative assessments at the beginning of the year to analyze where they are in terms of the standards they have mastered. I then prepare students for the mastery over these standards for the mid year and then the end of year assessments. I use formative assessments frequently every day to monitor student growth. Formative assessments can be given in the form of whiteboard checks, projects with rubrics, Choice boards, graphic organizers, student discussions, teacher-created quizzes, projects, and even simple question and answer sessions. The information collected with these assessments provides a thorough knowledge of what instruction my students will need to be successful at mastering a standard. Formative assessments can be differentiated to fit the learning style of students. This type of assessment can be a powerful tool to use for progress monitoring and can provide greater outcomes for summative assessments. By clearly identifying what we want students to learn, and using assessment before, during and after instruction, we can make a significant impact on improving student performance.

Assessments are used in class constantly to help guide prescriptive instruction! See the diagram below to learn how!

Below you fill find an example of a formative assessment that we use in class. This rubric will be used to grade student's Writer's Notebook entries.

“Knowing who students are, both as a group and as individuals, is critically important to being a successful teacher. Each student, and group of students, has their own unique needs, interactions, and culture” (Newman, 2013, p 3.4). By using differentiated instruction and high yield methods aligned with content, I am able to individualize my teaching to meet the needs of all of my students, both low-level and high-level learners. I also hold individual conferences with students to evaluate deficiencies and thereby provide the type of feedback that trains them how to monitor their own academic progress. Students who are self-motivated regarding the given subject matter usually tend to excel scholastically. My goal is to provide my students with a well-rounded education so they can learn to be critical thinkers and lifelong learners.